Comma lost, converted to ampersand when encoding address - php

Question

I have an address along the lines of the following:
123 Main Street, Boston Massachusetts, 02137
I need an address to remain intact through a URL so I tried the following:
echo urlencode($address);
echo rawurlencode($address);
The problem is that the commas keep being converted in to ampersands! 🙄︎
How do I prevent (the client? PHP? I'm not sure here) it from converting commas in to ampersands?
The HTTP query is address and the following is what happens:
print_r($_GET);
Yields:
Array (
[address] => 123 Main Street
[Boston_Massachusetts] =>
[02137] =>
)

Answer 1

If they're getting converted to ampersands, something is going horribly wrong, as both urlencode and rawurlencode convert commas to %2C.
Encoding the string 123 Main Street, Boston Massachusetts, 02137 with rawurlencode should give you 123%20Main%20Street%2C%20Boston%20Massachusetts%2C%2002137.
From here it's simply a matter of using rawurldecode when reading back from the URL to convert the encoded string back to your original string:
$address = "123 Main Street, Boston Massachusetts, 02137";
echo $address; // 123 Main Street, Boston Massachusetts, 02137
$encoded = rawurlencode($address);
echo $encoded; // 123%20Main%20Street%2C%20Boston%20Massachusetts%2C%2002137
$decoded = rawurldecode($encoded);
echo $decoded; // 123 Main Street, Boston Massachusetts, 02137
This can be seen working here.